Bullet punches through Lower Mainland family’s roof on New Year’s

A Langley family was startled early on New Year’s Day when a bullet smashed through the roof of their home.

“It was quite a large bang,” said Glennis Foster, who was up watching a movie at about 12:15 a.m. when she heard the noise. “I thought that something had broken or exploded.”

She checked around the house but couldn’t find any broken plates or shattered windows, and returned to watching her movie.

It was only when she was heading for bed that she noticed the small piece of lead on the living room floor, near the couch. That led her to a pile of debris in the dining room floor, and the three inch hole in the ceiling.

She woke up her husband Bruce, and the Fosters called the Langley RCMP.

“It came through our roof, through the attic, through the ceiling of the dining room,” Bruce said.

A former competition shooter, Bruce guesses the bullet is between .40 and .45 calibre.

“Could have done some damage,” he said.

The Fosters guess that someone fired the bullet in the air, and it happened to come down on their home. Glennis had been tidying up from New Year’s eve in the dining room not long before the bullet slammed through the roof.

“Someone’s stupidity could have caused something really serious,” said Bruce.

“Somebody was not thinking clearly, obviously, about the ramifications of their actions,” said Glennis.

Langley RCMP officers took the bullet as evidence, and a forensics team came by the morning of Jan. 1 to measure the angle at which the bullet struck the Foster’s suburban Brookswood home.

It looks like it came from the south, said Bruce.

For now, they’ve temporarily patched the hole in the roof and are looking at repairing their dining room ceiling.